


Cold and Still

by thefaceofhoe



Series: Speaking out for old fictional women [1]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M, Other, petrification, sort of one sided, statue, they have sex but its not what you expect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 13:47:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9494147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefaceofhoe/pseuds/thefaceofhoe
Summary: Free verse poem on a different view of the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. Aka Pygmalion is punished ironically for his hubris and Galatea kicks ass.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written in a ten minute time limit for poetry class when in a period that I resented how old stories treated women characters.

My hands are what gave birth to her.  
Child of my fingers  
The swell of her hips brushed clean of marble dust  
Utmost care  
White and breathless

Cold and pale and still, a corpse,  
But how could she be a corpse  
When she never lived at all?  
Reaching from the block finger by white finger  
Reaching for me to give her to life,  
I let her stiff arms embrace me  
Though they chilled me to my bone

The promise of her song quelled silent in that lily white throat  
The imagining of her heartbeat in the bloodless body  
Eyes empty and white as mother’s milk  
Shot hot longing through me  
Filled the fingertips nicked by stone dust and chisels  
And it hurt like the night itself   
as I implored the gods to give her life  
Or take my miserable one.

I was filled with excess life with  
My need for her to live  
And as I pressed my thrumming form to flush to her   
stone arms softened, flesh and warm  
The heavy dip of her breasts gave beneath my bosom   
Her breath wet and hot as I cried out her name.

My invocation was answered, I had made life with love  
And that love, that life, she carried me to my palette,  
took me into her warm golden form   
(smelling heady and growing in life every moment)  
Fell upon me, weak mortal that I am,  
Embraced me in a tangle  
Lapping my heat up as a cat may do milk and honey.   
I tasted that apple mouth I had chisled with such fantasy,   
Pressed into the supple flesh and curving limbs.  
Her beautiful gaze was almost vampiric, starving  
She wanted me  
Needed me  
And every moment her beauty grew and her eyes darkened and sparkled all the more and   
O! At last, at last I could bear it all and my limbs   
grew heavier and duller   
but I didn’t care.

she stood, skin glowing with perspiration in the late morning sun,  
Wet her pomegranate lips,  
Insidious gaze drinking me in,  
All I wanted to do was take her in my arms but they were ice.

Her black eyes were obsidian hunger  
Draining me of my life’s blood the longer she hovered,  
Unblinking   
Heart growing cold and still of its own accord and   
i invoked her name, my love, my child of stone made life, I begged her to   
To

And she leaned, body warm and sparkling and naked,  
Her mouth brushing over mine  
Rouge velvet over stone  
And I felt them not

She purred something in my ear-  
I’m sure of it!  
But my ears had gone hard and cold and deaf  
Stopped full, useless ivory shells.

She floated away,   
that swaying formed goddess, tossing sunbeams of orange hair over one smooth shoulder

Prayers answered, I lay, locked, lifeless, marble arms in the eternity of embrace.


End file.
